My steps were as swift as I could manage, nearly getting up to a jog, but I couldn't say I had quite reached that level. The weariness deep in my bones was too much, and if I moved that quickly, I suspected that stopping would end with me planting on my face. Still, I covered the remaining thirty feet to the prow in seconds.

Without saying anything, I stepped up to the two-inch-in-diameter rope and brought my sword down on the rough cordage. The strike might have gotten past the rope's surface layer. Maybe a few strands deep if I squint and turn my head to the side…

"Fucking cut!" I grunted as I lifted my blade from the suddenly loose rope and brought it down again. This time, I planted my feet and used my whole body to add to the force of my strike as I brought my arms down.

My lips twitched as I saw my blade sink halfway into the rope, and then the smile vanished as the rope stretched and tightened. Stumbling forward, my hands stung as the handle of my gladius was ripped from my grip, and I could only watch in horror as the blade spun around the cordage until it smashed into the deck and tore free from its prison, bouncing towards the river.

The pummel hit the wood so hard that it left an indent, and I looked at the sword for a long breath, waiting to see if my luck was so bad the handle or blade had broken from the impact. Or, I don't know, if a sudden wave would kick up and throw it into the water. Sighing in relief when nothing obvious happened, I knelt lower, reaching for the hilt, only for my head to snap up as another alarm filled the union.

A white dome surrounded the northern tower barge on the far side of the river. I had no time to react to the change, as the moment I looked at the large half-sphere, it exploded. I felt the coldest depths of winter strike me in the face as the cloud washed over me, causing my skin to numb and my eyelids to grow heavy from frost. Flinching like I was struck in the face, I raised my hand to shelter my squinting eyes from the piercingly cold wind.

When it stopped, I moved my hand from my face and looked upon a land of ice. The world glittered as the frozen water hanging in the air reflected light from the sunstones blazing on the Triad's walls, but that was not the biggest change. A layer of frost covered the decks of the boats, and the river itself was a dark sheet of ice that cracked and crackled as it froze over and thickened in seconds.

Beneath my feet, the deck rocked and swayed as the constricting ice lifted the boat, its beams and boards creaking and groaning as the straining wood complained about its treatment. But that noise was nothing compared to the crackling ice filling the half-mile-wide intersection of the Twins and Rush, echoing off the walls and rivers as it tried to compete with the thunder that rumbled overhead.

My eyes flicked to the first spot of motion that broke the stillness that had overtaken the river after the burst of cold. On the decks of the tower barges, the knights and mage beastkins restarted their fighting. The barges themselves glowed a shimmering blue, and even when a knight slammed an armored fist, mace, or sword into the tower or ship, the resulting boom did nothing to the ship's structure, so they quickly gave up on that course of action.

Well, that wasn't quite right. One knight was still trying to damage the structure, while the rest attempted to kill the beastkins radiating mana, a handful standing in a glowing circle, but the rest were free to roam.

It was a tier of fighting that I could never hope to participate in, as I could only see the afterimages of the fighters' blurring speed and shockwaves from their clashes. Everyone still alive on the ships was moving too fast to get a proper count of the number of figures, but I got the feeling that there were more beastkins than knights.

"They're coming over the fucking ice!" Someone shouted, snapping me out of my daze of watching the epic battle taking place a few hundred yards away.

Taking a couple steps forward, I watched the beastkins in the ships downstream begin leaping from their boats onto the frozen water. It was a good choice. While not that noticeable on deck, the barges had an incline to them. The prow was ten feet higher than the stern, making it easier to leap from one ship to the next but far more challenging to return. A situation only made more apparent was the freezing wave pushed out and froze the water.

"Hah!" Called Celeste to my right, voice laced with scorn, "Those fur faces are trapped in the ice! Serves them right!" Ignoring the bitch after realizing she wasn't calling out in alarm, just showing off her twisted personality, I continued my turn, looking back down the river… and the hoards of beastkins charging in our direction.

"Guardians protect us." I whispered before shouting, "They're coming from behind!" I felt Markus focus on my words. As he turned, his shock mirrored my own as he looked upon the on-rushing beastkins, and the commands he was going to voice died on his lips.

Five people could hold off several times as many beastkins when they had to leap back to our ship from downstream. It's hard to dodge a spear when hanging in the air or climbing, and these beastkins weren't suicidal. Those coming over the back and shoreside of the boat were in a similar situation. Beastkins were never the best swimmers to begin with, and the bigger they were, the worse swimmers they were. Weighed down with gear, there was little chance they would stay above the surface for long.

So, the few that chose to head toward us instead of the distant shore were swimming toward us with nothing but their claws and fangs. Though their claws were still dangerous, anyone with a spear could make short work of them while they were still in the water. But hundreds of beastkin leaping onto the deck from the ice fully armed? We stood no chance from those lopsided odds.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

The thought of making a run for it crossed my mind, but I quickly discarded it. I would be running toward a battle I could not join in a meaningful way other than a momentary annoyance, and that was assuming I managed to fight my way there while outrunning the beastkins, which, surprise, surprise, I can't.

Pulled out of my thoughts by a hollow boom from the ice to my right that shook the ship, I snapped my head around… seeing nothing. The next moment, the river jumped as the boom sounded again, followed by cracking ice as a spider web spread over its surface.

The looks of anticipation on the charging beastkin's faces turned to terror as they slid to a stop to keep their balance. What I would mark as the smart ones looked back at the nice, safe ships they had just left in longing, but it was too late.

A third boom sounded, and the faint noise of settling ice turned into hollow cracks as the ice sheet broke apart. From the center of the river, ice flew into the air as a spear of stone forced its way up from beneath the river's surface. Once it was free, shattering the ice's cohesion, the stone object only continued to grow and expand the hole.

What started as a six-foot-tall stone spike and three feet across at the base kept growing as more of the casting rose into the air. Three feet became seven, and seven became twenty as what looked more like a house with a tower on its top rose from the watery embrace of the river.

The whole time, all that could be heard on the river was the deafening sounds of multiple-foot thick ice breaking apart as the river became a slurry of ice blocks ranging from fist-sized to twenty feet across. What made the scene send a shiver of fear down my spine was that many beastkins were clawing at the larger chunks of ice in an attempt to escape the grinder and stay afloat. Keeping my balance on the suddenly moving boat, a crack sounded that I felt through my feet more than I heard, and the barge settled into the water with a splash, sending out a wave that momentarily pushed away the ice chunks.

"Cut the fucking ropes!" Markus shouted, though no one could hear his voice, only the mental transmission he sent to everyone.

Looking around the deck, I leaned down, grasping the sword's hilt conveniently near my feet, and stood up. Quickly raising and lowering the sword, I slashed most of the way through the already mostly severed rope as it was conveniently pulled tight. Raising the sword again to finish severing the last few strands, my eyes widened in fear as more tension was suddenly placed onto the line.

"Ahh!" I screamed as a short but sharp twang cracked the air, followed by a hissing thunk. With my free hand, I reached down, clamping it onto the front of my left thigh, feeling like hot blood should be seeping through my fingers. I could see the two sides of the rope at my feet. One portion was cleanly hacked apart, while the other had frayed ends that snapped under the tension of the bucking ships.

"Can't even cut a rope without getting hurt?" Celeste sneered at me from the side, the other rope cleanly sliced through, unlike the one at my feet. Looking her in the eyes, I smirked before turning my back to her and looking out at the river. Celeste's stifled hiss of rage that I had ignored and turned my back on her was music to my ears.

Actually focusing on what I was looking at after a moment of reveling in my petty victory, I watched the beastkin fighting for their lives. Most tried to use the pieces of ice as springboards as they pushed off them to speed up their progress to safety. Some were climbing onto the surface of the ice sheets, trying to balance in the center, but few succeeded at that for long.

The total result of everything was a clusterfuck.

Unable to see the other side of the ice sheet, beastkin would kick or push a block of ice into one of their brethren, some of which I could see had enough force behind them to smash the skulls of fellow beastkins. An event I was guessing happened often by the countless splotches of red everywhere on the chunks of ice.

Turning to what mattered, I watched the house-sized rock rise into the air and drift toward the southern tower barge. The rock casting continued to rotate and move until the point was facing the river, and it was dozens of feet above the deck.

As if someone had reached into the night sky and ripped a section off the moon, the rock began to fall, picking up speed faster than it had any right to. In response, a blue dome appeared around the ship, but it looked feeble in comparison to the miniature mountain. When the tip of the stone cone impacted the dome, a ring of blue expanded outward from the impact point with such force that I had to take a step back to keep my balance.

Even then, the rock still drove downward without wavering. Against the combined might of the tons the rock weighed and the casting increasing the downward force, the blue dome slowly collapsed inward. It was like a full water bladder that someone's finger was pressing into.

Despite the movement being as slow as syrup dripping down a wall, I wasn't deceived. Every few seconds, another azure ring of energy would burst out from the conflict, and each one was as strong as the last as the two opposing forces fought. And with every wave, the waters filled with beastkins and ice churned into a maelstrom of blood and gore.

After what felt like hours of watching the titanic conflict between rock and energy, the rock had more than half its length surrounded by the blue shield. And the blue had become so dark that I could no longer see the covered rock or those on the deck.

All at once, the sides of the blue shield exploded outward, sending out a wave along the surface of the river that was taller than the barges. This time, instead of being little more than a stiff gust of wind, the wave of released energy impacted the ships before me, shattering them into splinters and throwing the beastkins on them into the air. Halfway through the vessel in front of me, the wave abruptly stopped and was sucked back to the beastkins, where it formed a pillar surging upward into the stone.

As the light vanished, the rock, which had nearly reached the ship's deck, was moving upward fast. It was already halfway up to the bottom of the middle fort, and it didn't look like it would stop. From my perspective, it looked like inches were the difference from the stone impacting the bottom portion of the bridge before it reached its apex and began to fall again.

When the boulder was still more than halfway to the water, a figure leaped from the southern tower barge and slipped into the stone like it was water. Brows furrowing, I didn't understand what had just happened, and then I saw color seep into the rock. Lines of orange spread over the stone as it continued to fall, and then the rock began to unfold as if it was a person curled up like a ball.

"The Molten Man," I muttered in awe.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.